2325 
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Metal Edge, Inc. 2007 PAT, 



LB 2325 
,H6 
Copy 1 



63d Congress \ 
2d Session f 



SENATE 



f Document 
\ No. 536 



ADDRESS 



DELIVERED AT HARVARD UNION, CAMBRIDGE, 
MASS., MARCH 23, 1914 



By 



SENATOR HENRY F. HOLLIS 

OF NEW HAMPSHIRE 






I 



PRESENTED BY MR. KENYON 

JULY 9,191 4. — Ordered to be printed 



WASHINGTON 
1914 



&* 






£ 




D. OF D< 
JUL 20 1914 



1 \ 



i 

I 

ADDRESS DELIVERED AT HARVARD UNION, CAMBRIDGE, MASS., 

MARCH 23, 1914. 



" By Senator Henry F. Hollis, of New Hampshire. 



FROM ONE SENATOR S VIEWPOINT. 

" I was graduated at Harvard in 1892. I believe I am the first 
Harvard man of radical views to occupy a seat in the Senate. 

" I do not fairly represent Harvard College in the Senate of the 
United States. I am quite sure that Harvard College is not repre- 
sentative of the United States nor of New England. She is too 
conservative, too hidebound. She lags behind the times. She does 
not lead ; she follows. 

" In the Middle West the bond between some States and their lead- 
ing universities is very close. The State legislatures submit ques- 
tions of public policy to the college faculties, and receive opinions 
which largely control their action. This is particularly the case in 
"Wisconsin. Imagine, if you please, the Legislature of Massachusetts 
requesting an opinion from the faculty of Harvard College. Imagine 
the reception it would get on Beacon Hill, if it should find its way 
there. 

" It is a great pity that the political arm of our State and National 
Governments should not receive support from our colleges. Our 
leading college professors look on politics as a low pursuit, a nasty 
business. Our leading legislators regard college opinion as a joke. 
Both these attitudes are very real : they are equally mistaken. 

" There are many brave, patriotic men among the hosts of brainy, 
upright professors on our college faculties. There are many brave, 
patriotic men among the Senators of the United States. But the 
college men regard most politicians as corrupt and insincere, while 
the politicians regard college professors as impractical theorists. 
Worse than this, they believe that all college views are tainted by the 
great sums of money which have been bestowed on our colleges by 
men of great wealth. 

" College professors are notoriously ill-paid. They must live re- 
spectably ; they must associate with people of culture and refinement; 
they must educate their children at expensive schools and colleges. 
They can not save enough to become independent; they are depend- 
ent for their very living on the governing board of the college; and 
the governing board must satisfy the rich men who make princely 
donations to the college. The belief is prevalent among public men 
in Washington that every eastern college is eating from the hand 

3 



4 ADDRESS OF SENATOR HENRY F. HOLLIS. 

that has robbed the pockets of the people. Until this belief is dis- 
sipated Congress will have little faith in our colleges or in college 
men. 

" There is a firm belief among public men that the President 
of the United States was forced from the presidency of a leading 
eastern college because he tried to stem the tide of snobbery, and 
make that college democratic in the social not the political sense. 
In Stover at Yale we read the brave attempt of Owen Johnson to 
reveal the true weakness of our dearest rival. 

" In New England our colleges still have a wide influence. A 
member of the faculty who makes address on public questions is lis- 
tened to with considerable respect, but when it is learned that a col- 
lege professor has been talking in favor of certain railroad policies 
from a supposed interest in public affairs, while he has been secretly 
receiving pay from the railroad whose policies he advocates, our 
confidence is sadly shaken. 

"A college at best will act the part of an old man, a conservative 
old man, in politics. Worse than that, it will act the part of an old 
society man in politics; it is likely to be snobbish, supercilious, and 
overnice. 

" We know that the young man is the progressive spirit, the radical 
in politics. As he gets older he becomes conservative, his political 
arteries harden, he slows down. Not until he becomes too old for 
radical action does he become important enough to enter the faculty. 
The dominant note, then, in college circles is the note of the old man, 
the man of influence, the conservative. 

"And among the students, where youth is, we find the chill of con- 
vention, the rule of the social lion. A few leading spirits attain 
prominence on their merits, but in a large college the leaders, as a 
rule, are men of rich and influential families. The man in the baggy 
suit, with the country hair cut, stays in the background during his 
college course ; he feels that he has nothing in common with the rich 
young blade who cuts a dash with his automobile or riding horse ; he 
sticks to his books, gets what good he can from his college course, 
leaves no impress on the college constitution, and does not return for 
commencement. If he does drift back, he finds the same society men 
in charge, the same recognition of social caste, and he doesn't come 
back again. 

" The result is that our colleges represent a very thin upper crust 
of our great American life. They are always respectable, always con- 
servative, always reactionary. That is why rich men who find things 
rigged about right for their money-making operations are glad to 
contribute to the colleges. The colleges are the greatest dead-weight 
the capitalists can fasten upon the necks of the American people. 
The standpatter is conservative ; wealth is conservative ; the college is 
conservative. They are all in the same boat. 

" My best friends will point out to me to-morrow that there is no 
help for this, that it has always been so, and it always will be so. I 
admit that it has always been so; I admit that the great colleges in 
this country have never led in a great reform ; that the great colleges 
in England have never led in a great reform. But I refuse to admit 
that colleges are incorrigible ; I refuse to admit that they are beyond 
salvation. 



ADDRESS OF SENATOR HENRY F. HOLLIS. 5 

" I would begin by declining gifts from men of great wealth. If 
new buildings are needed, I would call on the alumni for contribu- 
tions, limiting the amount to be subscribed by a single donor. I 
would increase the income by increasing the tuition fees. An educa- 
tion achieved at some sacrifice is more valuable than one acquired 
through charity. 

" College life should be made less expensive, more simple ; it should 
be standardized. No more elaborate dormitories should be built. 
The popularity of the oldest dormitories in the yard shows that col- 
lege men are not afraid of discomfort. New buildings should be 
severly plain and uniform. Men of the same college class should be 
quartered in similar buildings. Rooms and meals should be in fact 
' commons ' and ' commons ' should be compulsory. 

" Every man should be compelled to live simply and to take part in 
military drill once a week. Automobiles and other forms of show 
should be prohibited. It is not good for a man to have everything in 
life before he is fairly grown. 

" Class elections should be by Australian ballot, preceded by pri- 
maries, and only men of high scholarship should be eligible to office. 
Every effort should be made to promote a democratic spirit and to 
crush out snobbishness. I should impose a limit on each man's allow- 
ance. If this did not suit the very rich man, he could easily find a 
college where he would be welcome. 

" But. most important of all, college men should be taught what 
is wrong with the world and the way to set it right; what poverty 
is and where it exists, what makes it and what will prevent it ; what 
injustice is, its causes and its remedies; the reasons for high cost of 
living and the way to bring it down ; the problem of immigration and 
how to make country life worth living. They should be taught hu- 
man interests, the brotherhood of man, the glory of self-sacrifice, the 
passion of service to mankind. They should be taught these things 
until they are athirst for the battle against the wrongs and evils and 
injustices of the world. 

" When a man is distinguished in public service of any kind he 
should be invited to speak to the student the truth as he sees it, so 
that they may catch the contagion of his spirit and the stimulus of 
his force and courage. 

" The motto of Harvard is ' Veritas,' a Latin word meaning 
• truth.' I have availed myself freely of that mute invitation to 
speak the truth as I see it. and I thank you for the privilege. 

" But Harvard's ' Veritas ' does not mean the truth of the past 
alone, the truth that lies buried in the page of geology, that has stood 
the test of centuries, and has received the approval of scholars long 
since dead. Harvard's 'Veritas' should be the living truth, not the 
truth of the last century, the last generation, or the last decade, but 
truth in the making, the truth of the great, throbbing, kindly, cruel 
world that pulses to-day just outside the college yard, the vital truth 
that makes a man boil at injustice and burn to make the next year 
better than the last." 

o 



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